Sorry to say [or proud to say depending on your POV] I remember the days when the telephones had no dial at all, you took the receiver off-hook, 'flashed' to get the operators attention, and told the operator what number you wanted to be connected to. ...and this was in the suburbs of Chicago, not out in the sticks!

In those days my father an I would take over our one and only bathroom on Friday nights and turn it into a darkroom, much to my mother's chagrin. We placed plywood over the tub to form a workbench for the chem trays and printed B&W contact prints from the 4x5 speed graflex [that I still have]. As fun, educational, and family bonding as these times and experiences were, I must admit using PSP (or PhotoShop) to make pictures is far more satisfying.

Howdy Doody, Caption Midnight , Amos and Andy, you could fill your car with gas for $3.
Rabbit ear antennas and 7" B&W TV's, cup of coffee for 10 cents.
And going to a movie and saw two full length features AND a cartoon or two and all for 35 cents!
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thanks a lot guys! I'm really gonna try using the advice you gave me. There's still one thing I don't understand though:

Basically, this rule says that for full sunlight, your exposure will be f/16 at the reciprocal of the ISO for a shutter speed (i.e. ISO = 100, shutter speed would be 1/100).

This is because everyone's forgotten that if you have a consumer digicam these days, you won't have an f/16 stop available. The f/number is how big the hole is that lets in the light. The bigger the number, the smaller the hole. f/16 would be so small with the short focal length lenses (f) we have now that all sorts of strange optical diffraction effects would spoil your pictures. My own camera has f/8 as its smallest hole, and this lets in 4x as much light as f/16.

To use the f/16 rule at f/8, you need to give a shutter speed four times faster.

So, for the sunny 8 rule, read "your exposure will be f/8 at one-quarter of the reciprocal of the ISO for a shutter speed" (i.e., ISO=100, shutter speed would be (one divided by 100 divided by 4), i.e., 1/400